Kitabı oku: «Historical Miniatures», sayfa 12
“I remember, but I want to forget them.”
“Listen, Martin!” the monk interrupted him, with an insulting air of familiarity; “when you go away from here, and get home, don’t forget to curb your tongue! Think of what I say: there are eyes and ears which follow you where you go, and when you least suspect it.”
“If the Lord is with me, what can men do against me?”
“Are you sure that the Lord is with you? Do you know His ways and His will?—You only? Can you interpret His meaning when He speaks?”
“Yes, I can; for I hear his voice in my conscience. Get thee hence, Satan, or I shall pray that heaven’s lightning may smite thee! I came here as a believing child, but I shall depart as a believing man, for your questions have only evoked my silent answers which you have not heard, but which some day you will hear. You have killed Savonarola, but I am young and strong, and I shall live. Mark that!”
Luther did not stay long in Rome, but he took the opportunity of learning Hebrew, and attended the lectures of the Jew Elia Levi ben Asher, surnamed Bachur or Elias Levita.
There he met Cardinal Viterbo, the patron of the Jews, and many other celebrities, for Oriental languages were then in fashion after the Turks had established themselves in Constantinople.
Luther enjoyed the friendship of the old Jew, for Elias was the only “Christian” whom he found in Rome. It was a pity, to be sure, that he lived under the Law, and was not acquainted with the Gospel, but he knew no better.
THE INSTRUMENT
In the year 1483, the same year in which Luther was born, Docter Coctier sat in his laboratory at Paris, and carried on a philosophical discussion with a chemical expert who was passing through the city.
The laboratory was in the same building as his observatory, in the Marais quarter of the town, a site occupied to-day by the Place des Vosges. Not far away is the Bastille, the magnificent Hôtel de Saint-Pol, and the brilliant Des Tournelles, the residence of the Kings before the Louvre was built. Here Louis XI had given his private physician, chancellor, and doctor of all the sciences, Coctier, a house which lay in a labyrinth-like park called the Garden of Daedalus. The doctor was speaking, and the expert listened: “Yes, Plato in his Timaeus calls gold one of the densest and finest substances which filters through stone. There is a metal derived from gold which is black, and that is iron. But a substance more akin to gold is copper, which is composed of shining congealed fluids, and one of whose minor constituents is green earth. Now I ask, ‘Why cannot copper be freed from this last, and refined to gold?’”
“Yes,” answered the expert, “it can, if one uses atramentum or the philosopher’s stone.”
“What is that?”
“Atramentum is copperas.”
“Ventre-saint-gris! that is Plato’s iron! Now I see! Who taught you that?”
“I learnt it from the greatest living magician in Wittenberg. His name is Dr. Faustus, and he has studied magic in Krakau.”
“He is alive, then! Tell me! Tell me!”
“This man, according to many witnesses, has done miracles like Christ; he has undertaken to restore the lost comedies of Plautus and Terence; his mind can soar on eagle’s wings and discover secrets of the heights and depths.”
“Has he also found the elixir of life?”
“Yes, since gold can be resolved into its elements.”
“If gold can be resolved, then it has constituents. What are they?”
“Gold can be easily dissolved in oil of vitriol, salts of ammonia, and saltpetre.”
“What do you say?”
The Doctor jumped up; the stove had heated the room and made him uncomfortable.
“Let us go for a little walk,” he said; “but I must first make a note of what you say, for, when I wish to remember something important, the devil makes confusion in my head. These, then, are means of dissolving gold—oil of vitriol, salts of ammonia, and saltpetre!”
The expert, whose name was Balthasar, now first noticed that he had given his information without obtaining a receipt or any equivalent for it, and, since he was not one of the unselfish kind, he threw out a feeler.
“How is our gracious King?”
The question revealed his secret and his wish, and put Doctor Coctier on his guard. “Ah,” he said to himself, “you have your eye on the King with your elixir of life.” And then he added aloud, “He is quite well.”
“Oh! I had heard the opposite!”
“Then they have lied.”
Then there was silence in the room, and the two men tried to read each other’s thoughts. It was so terribly still that they felt their hatred germinate, and had already begun a fight to the death. Doctor Coctier’s thoughts ran as follows: “You come with an elixir to lengthen the life of the monster who is our King; you wish thereby to make your own fortune and to bring trouble on me; and you know that he who has the King’s life in his hands, has the power.”
Quick as lightning he had taken his resolve, coolly and cruelly, as the custom of the time was. He resumed the conversation, and said, “Now you must see my ‘Daedalus’ or labyrinth. Since the time of the Minotaur, there has been none like it.”
The labyrinth was a thicket threaded by secret passages, bordered by hornbeam-hedges, four ells high, and so dense that one did not notice the thin iron balustrade which ran along them. Artistically contrived and impenetrable, the labyrinth meandered in every direction. It seemed to be endlessly long, and was so arranged that its perspectives deceived the eye. It also contained secret doors and underground passages, and a visitor soon grew aware that it had not been constructed as a joke, but in deadly earnest. Only the King and Doctor Coctier possessed the key to this puzzle.
When the two men had walked for a good time, admired statues and watched fountains play, Balthasar wished to sit upon a bench, whether it was that he was tired or suspected some mischief.
But the Doctor prevented him: “No, not on that seat,” he said. They continued their walk. But now the Doctor quickened his steps, and, after a while, his guest felt again weary and confused in his head from the perpetual turning round. Therefore he threw himself on the first seat which he saw, and drew a deep breath.
“You run the life out of me, Doctor,” he said.
“No, you are not so short-lived,” answered the Doctor; “I see a long line of life on your forehead, and the bar between your eyes shows that you were born under the planet Jupiter. Besides, you possess the elixir of life, and can prolong your existence as much as you like, can’t you?”
The expert noticed a cruel smile on the Doctor’s face, and, feeling himself in danger, tried to spring up, but the arms of the chair had closed around him, and he was held fast. The next moment Doctor Coctier seemed to be seeking for something in the sand with his left foot, and, when he had found it, he pressed with all his weight on the invisible object.
“Farewell, young man,” he said; “loquacious, conceited young man, who wanted to lord it over Doctor Coctier. Now I will settle the King for you.”
The seat disappeared in the earth with the expert. It was an oubliette—a pit with a trap-door, which drew the veil of oblivion over the man who had vanished.
When he had finished the affair, the Doctor sought to leave the labyrinth, but could not find the way at once, for he was deep in thought, and kept on repeating the formula for the elixir which he had just learnt, to impress it on his mind, in case the recipe should be lost—“oil of vitriol, salts of ammonia, saltpetre.” Suddenly he found himself in a round space where many paths converged, and to his great astonishment saw a body lying on the ground. It looked like that of a large brown watchdog, but limp and lifeless.
“It is not the first who has been caught in this crab-pot,” he thought, and came nearer. But as the brown mass moved, he saw that it was a man with torn clothes and a shabby fur cap.
It was the King—Louis XI in the last year of his life.
“Sire, in the name of all the saints, what is the matter with you?” exclaimed the Doctor.
“Wretch!” answered the King, “why do you construct such traps that one cannot find the way out of them?”
Now it was Louis himself who, in his youth, had constructed the maze, but the Doctor could not venture to tell him so. Therefore he spoke soothingly.
“Sire, you are ill. Why do you not remain in Tours? How have you come here?”
“I cannot sleep, and I cannot eat. The last few days I have passed in Vincennes, in Saint-Pol, in the Louvre, but I find peace nowhere. At last I came here, in order to be safe in the place which only you and I know; I came yesterday morning, and would have stayed longer, but I was hungry, and when I wanted to get out, I could not find the way. I have been here, freezing, last night. Take me away; I am ill; feel my pulse, and see whether it is not the quartan ague.” The Doctor tried to feel his pulse, but did so with difficulty for it was hardly beating at all; but he dared not tell the King so.
“Your pulse is regular and strong, sire; let us get home!”
“I will eat at your house; you only can prepare food properly; all the rest spoil it with their everlasting condiments; they spice all my dishes, and the spices are bad. Jacob, help me to get away from here—help me. Did you see the star last night? Is there anything new in the sky? There is certain a comet approaching. I feel it before it comes.”
“No, sire; no comet is approaching....”
“Do you answer impertinently? Then you believe I am sick—perhaps incurably.”
“No, sire, you are healthier than ever; but follow me—I will make you a bed, and prepare you a meal.”
The King rose and followed the Doctor. The latter, however, wished the monarch to go before him but the King mistrusted his only last friend, who certainly did not love him, and would have gladly seen him dead.
“Beware of the seats, sire,” he cried. “Do not go too near to the hedge; keep in the middle of the path.”
“Your seats themselves should.... Forgive me my sins.” He crossed himself.
When they came out of the labyrinth, the King fell in a rage at the recollection of what he had suffered, and, instead of being grateful towards his rescuer, he burst into abuse: “How could you let me go astray in your garden, and let me sleep on the bare ground in the open air? You are an ass.” They entered the laboratory, where it was warm, and the King, who was observant, noticed at once the recipe which the Doctor had left there.
“What are you doing behind my back? What recipe have you been writing? Is it poison or medicine? Oil of vitriol is poison, salts of ammonia are only for dysentery, saltpetre produces scurvy. For whom have you made this mixture?”
“It is for the gardener’s cow, which has calved,” answered the Doctor, who certainly did not wish to prolong the tyrant’s life.
The King laid down on a sofa. “Jacob,” he said, “you must not go away; I will not eat, but I will sleep, and you must sit here by me. I have had to sleep for eight nights. But put out the fire; it hurts my eyes. Don’t let down the blinds; I want to see the sun; otherwise I cannot sleep.”
He seemed to fall asleep, but it was only a momentary nap. Then he grew wide awake again, and sat up in bed.
“Why do you keep starlings in your garden, Jacob?”
“I have no starlings,” answered the Doctor impatiently, “but if you have heard them whistling, sire, they must be there with your permission.”
“Don’t you hear them, then?”
“No! but what are they singing?”
“Yes, you know! After the shameful treaty of Peronne, when I had to yield to Charles of Burgundy, the Parisians taught their starlings to cry ‘Peronne!’ Do you know what they are saying now?”
The Doctor lost patience, for he had heard these old stories thousands of times: “They are not saying ‘Guienne,’ are they?” he asked.
There was an ugly reference to fratricide in the question, for the King was suspected of having murdered his brother, the Duke of Guienne. He started from the sofa in a pugnacious attitude. “What! You believe in this fable? But I have never committed murder, though I would certainly like to murder you....”
“Better leave it alone!” answered the Doctor cynically; “you know what the starshave said—eight days after my death, follows yours.”
The King had an attack of cramp, for he believed this fable, which Coctier had invented to protect his own life. But when he recovered consciousness, he continued to wander in his talk.
“They also say that I murdered my father, but that is a lie. He starved himself to death for fear of being poisoned.”
“Of being poisoned by you! You are a fine fellow! But your hour will soon come.”
“Hush!… I remember every thing now. My father was a noodle who let France be overrun by the English, and when the Maid of Orleans saved him, gave her up to the English. I hate my father who was false to my mother with Agnes Sorel, and had his legitimate children brought up by his paramour. When he left the kingdom to itself, I and the nobles took it in hand. That you call ‘revolt,’ but I have never stirred up a revolt! That is a lie.”
“Listen!” the Doctor broke in; “if you wish to confess, send for your father confessor.”
“I am not confessing to you; I am defending myself.”
“Who is accusing you, then? Your own bad conscience.”
“I have no bad conscience, but I am accused unjustly.”
“Who is accusing you? The starling?”
“My wife and children accuse me, and don’t wish to see me.”
“No; if you have sent them to Amboise, they cannot see you, and, as a matter of fact, they do not wish to.”
“To think that I, the son of King Charles VII, must hear this sort of thing from a quack doctor! I have always liked people of low rank; Olivier the barber was my friend.”
“And the executioner Tristan was your godfather.”
“He was provost-marshal, you dog!”
“The tailor became a herald.”
“And the quack doctor a chancellor! Put that to my account and praise me, ingrate! for having protected you from the nobles, and for only having regard to merit.”
“That is certainly a redeeming feature.”
Just then a man appeared in the doorway with his cap in his hand.
“Who is there?” cried the King. “Is it a murderer?”
“No, it is only the gardener,” the man answered.
“Ha! ha! gardener!—your cow has calved, hasn’t she?”
“I possess no cow, sire, nor have I ever had one.”
The King was beside himself, and flew at Coctier’s throat.
“You have lied to me, scoundrel; it is not medicine you were preparing, but poison.”
The gardener disappeared. “If I wished to do what I should,” said Coctier, “I would treat you like Charles the Bold did when you cheated him.”
“What did he do? What do people say that he did?”
“People say that he beat you with a stick.”
The King was ashamed, went to bed again, and hid his face in the pillow. The Doctor considered this a favourable moment for preferring a long-denied request.
“Will you now liberate the Milanese?” he asked.
“No.”
“But he cannot sit any more in his iron cage!”
“Then let him stand!”
“Don’t you know that when one has to die, one good deed atones for a thousand crimes?”
“I will not die!”
“Yes, sire, you will die soon.”
“After you!”
“No, before me.”
“That is also a lie of yours.”
“All have lied to you, liar. And your four thousand victims whom you have had executed....”
“They were not victims; they were criminals.”
“Those four thousand slaughtered will witness it the judgment seat against you.”
“Lengthen my life; then I will reform myself.”
“Liberate the Milanese.”
“Never!”
“Then go to perdition—and quickly. Your pulse is so feeble that your hours are numbered.”
The King jumped up, fell on his knees before the physician, and prayed, “Lengthen my life.”
“No! I should like to abbreviate it, were you not the anointed of the Lord. You ought to have rat-poison.”
“Mercy! I confess that I have acted from bad motives; that I have only thought of myself; that I have never loved the people, but used them in order to put down the nobles; I grant that I made agreements and treaties with the deliberate purpose of breaking them; that I … Yes, I am a poor sinful man, and my name will be forgotten; all that I have done will be obliterated....”
A stranger now appeared in the open door. It was a young man in the garb of the Minorites.
“Murderer!” screamed the King, and sprang up.
“No,” answered the monk, “I am he whom you called Vincent of Paula.”
“My deliverer! say a word—a single word of comfort.”
“Sire,” answered Vincent, “I have heard your confession, and will give you absolution in virtue of my office.”
“Speak.”
“Very well. Your motives were not pure, as you yourself confess, but your work will not perish, for He who guides the destinies of men and nations uses all and each for His purposes. Not long ago it was a pure virgin who saved France; now it is not quite so blameless a man. But your work, sire, was in its result of greater importance than that of the Maid, for you have completed what the Roman Caesar began. The hundred-year war with England is over, the Armagnacs and Burgundians quarrel no more, the Jacquerie war has ceased, and the peasants have returned to their ploughs. You have united eleven provinces, France has become one land, one people, and will now take the place of Rome, which will disappear and be forgotten for centuries, perhaps some day to rise again. France will guide the destinies of Europe, and be great among the crowned heads, so long as it does not aim at empire like the Rome of the Caesars, for then it will be all over with it. Thank God that you have been able to be of service, though in ignorance of the will and purposes of your Lord, when you thought you were only going your own way!”
“Montjoie Saint Denis!” exclaimed the King. “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”
“But not here,” broke in the Doctor, who was tired of the whole business. “Travel back to Tours, take the priest with you, and leave me in peace!”
The King returned to Plessis-les-Tours, where he ended his days after severe sufferings. He did not obtain peace, but he did obtain death.
“Now the rod is thrown into the fire,” said Doctor Coctier, “let it burn; the children have grown up, and can look after themselves. Executioners also have their uses, as Tristan L’Ermite and his master Louis XI know. Peace be with them.”
OLD MERRY ENGLAND
Cardinal Wolsey’s oared galley pushed off from the Tower Bridge, below the iron gateway. It gleamed with red and gold; flags and sails flapped lazily in a gentle breeze. The Cardinal sat on the stern-deck surrounded by his little court; most of his attendants he had left at home in York Palace, later known as Whitehall. His face was red both from the reflection of his red dress as from the wine which he had been drinking at noon with King Henry VIII in the Tower, and also from the new French sickness, which was very fashionable, as everything French was.
He was in a cheerful mood, for he had just received fresh proofs of the King’s favour.
At his side stood the King’s secretary, Thomas Cromwell. Both were parvenus. Wolsey was the son of a butcher, Cromwell the son of a smith, and that was probably one of the causes of their friendship, although the Cardinal was by twenty years the elder of the two.
“This is a happy day,” said Wolsey joyfully, and cast a glance up at the Tower, which was still a royal residence, though it was soon to cease to be one. “I have obtained the head of Buckingham, that fool who believed he had a right of succession to the crown.”
“Who has the right of succession,” asked Cromwell, “since there is no male heir, and none is expected?”
“I will soon see to that! Katherine of Aragon is weak and old, but the King is young and strong.”
“Remember Buckingham,” said Cromwell; “it is dangerous to meddle with the succession to the throne.”
“Nonsense! I have guided England’s destiny hitherto, and will guide it further.”
Cromwell saw that it was time to change the topic.
“It is a good thing that the King is leaving the Tower. It must be depressing for him to have only a wall between himself and the prisoners, and to see the scaffold from his windows.”
“Don’t talk against our Tower! It is a Biblia Pauperum, an illustrated English History comprising the Romans, King Alfred, William the Conqueror, and the Wars of the Roses. I was fourteen years old when England found its completion at the battle of Bosworth, and the thirty years’ War of the Roses came to an end with the marriage between York and Lancaster....”
“My father used to talk of the hundred years’ war with France, which ended in the same year in which Constantinople was taken by the Turks—i.e. 1453.”
“Yes, all countries are baptized in blood; that is the sacrament of circumcision, and see what fertility follows this manuring with blood! You don’t know that apple-trees bear most fruit after a blood-bath.”
“Yes I do; my father always used to bury offal from butchers’ shops at the root of fruit-trees.”
Here he stopped and coloured, for he had made a slip with his tongue. In the Cardinal’s presence no one dared to speak of slaughter or the like, for he was hated by the people, and often called “The Butcher.” Cromwell, however, was above suspicion, and the Cardinal did not take his remark ill, but saved the situation.
“Moreover,” he continued, “my present was well received by the King; Hampton Court is also a treasure, and has the advantage of being near Richmond and Windsor, but can naturally not bear comparison with York Place.”
The galley was rowed up the river, on whose banks stood the most stately edifices which existed at the time. They passed by customhouses and warehouses, fishmarkets, and fishers’ landing-places; the pinnacles of the Guildhall or Council House; the Convent of Blackfriars, the old Church of St. Paul’s; the Temple, formerly inhabited by the Templars, now a court of justice; the Hospital of St. James, subsequently appropriated by Henry VIII and made a palace. Finally they reached York Place (Whitehall) by Westminster, where Wolsey, the Cardinal and Papal Legate, Archbishop of York and Keeper of the Great Seal, dwelt with his court, comprising about eight hundred persons, including court ladies.
Then they disembarked after conversing on ordinary topics; for the Cardinal preferred discussing trifles when he had great schemes in hand, and that which occupied him especially just now was his candidature for the papacy.
Sir Thomas More, the King’s Treasurer and Privy Councillor, sat in his garden at Chelsea above Westminster. He was correcting proofs, for he was a great scholar, and wrote on all the controversial questions of the day, religious and political, though he was essentially a man of peace, living in this suburb an idyllic life with his family.
He wore his best attire, although in the house and at work. He also showed signs of disquietude, looking now and then towards the door, for at an early hour of the day no one less than the King had sent an intimation of his intention to pay him a visit. He knew from experience how dangerous it was to be on intimate terms with the King and to share his secrets. His sovereign had the bad habit of asking for advice which he did not follow, and of imparting secrets the knowledge of which often cost his confidants their heads. The most dangerous thing of all was to undertake to act as intermediary between Henry and anyone else, for then one fell between two millstones.
With a mind prepared for the worst, More tried to quiet himself by reading his proofs, but his efforts were vain. He rose and began to walk up and down the garden path, went over in his mind all possible causes of the King’s coming, rehearsed answers to objections, refutations of arguments, and ways of modifying the King’s too strong views without causing offence.
Henry was certainly a learned man, who had a respect for knowledge, but he had a savage nature which he tried to tame with the scourge of religion, though without success.
The clank of armour and tramp of horses was now audible, and the Treasurer hastened, cap in hand, to the garden gate.
The King had already dismounted from his horse, and hastened towards his friend, carrying a portfolio in his hand.
“Thomas,” he said without any preface, “take and read! He has answered me! Who? Luther, of course! He—the man whose mind reeks like carrion, and whose practices are damnable—has answered my book, The Babylonish Captivity. Take and read what he says, and tell me if you have ever seen anything like it.”
He gave the Treasurer a printed pamphlet. “And then this devil of a liar says I have not written my book myself. Take and read it, and give me your advice.”
More began to read Luther’s answer to Henry’s attack. He read it to himself, and often found it hard to remain serious, although the King kept his eyes fixed on his face in order to read his thoughts.
Among other things, Luther had written: “It matters nothing to me whether King Heinz or Kunz, the Devil or Hell itself, has composed this book. He who lies is a liar—therefore I fear him not. It seems to me that King Henry has provided an ell or two of coarse stuff for this mantle, and that the poisonous fellow Leus (Leo X), who wrote against Erasmus, or someone of his sort, has cut and lined the hood. But I will help them—please God—by ironing it and attaching bells to it.”
More felt that he must say something or lose his head, so he said: “That is monstrous! That is quite monstrous!”
“Go on!” exclaimed Henry.
After saying that he postponed the discussion of the other six sacraments, Luther added: “I am busy in translating the Bible into German, and cannot stir up Heinz’s dirt any more.”
The Treasurer was nearly choking with suppressed laughter, but he felt the sword suspended over his head, and continued: “But I will give the poisonous liar and blasphemer, King Heinz, once for all, a complete answer, and stop his mouth.... Therefore he thinks to hang on to the Pope and play the hypocrite before him.... Therefore they mutually caress and tickle each other like a pair of mule’s ears....”
“No, sire,” More broke off, “I cannot go on; it is high treason to read it.”
“I will read,” said the King, and took the pamphlet from him:
“‘I conquer and defy Papists, Thomists, Henrys, Sophists, and all the swine of hell!’ He calls us swine!”
“He is a madman who ought to be beaten to death with iron bars or hunted in a forest with bloodhounds.”
“Yes, he ought! But imagine!—this scoundrel gives himself out for a prophet and servant of Christ. And he has married a nun. That is incest! But he has been punished for it. The Kurfürst of Saxony has abandoned him, and none of his so-called friends went to the wedding....”
“What is his object? What is his new teaching? Justification through faith. If one only believes, one may live like a swine!”
“And his doctrine about the Communion. The Church says the Elements are changed by consecration, but this materialist says they actually are Christ’s Body and Blood. Then the corn in the field and the grapes in the vineyard are already Christ’s Body and Blood! He is an ass! And the world is mad.”
“And the consequence,—sin with impunity! Sire, allow me to read some lines, which I have written as an answer, not to these but to his other follies—only some lines which I hope to add to.”
“Read! I listen when you speak, for I have learnt to listen, and, through that, I know something.”
The King sat down astride on a chair, as though he would ride against his formidable foe.
“Honourable brother,” read More, “father, drinker runaway from the Augustinian Order, clumsy tipsy reveller of the worldly and spiritual kingdoms, ignorant teacher of sacred theology.”
“Good, Thomas; he knows no theology!”
“And this is the way he composed his book against King Henry, the Defender of Our Faith: he collected his stable-companions, and commissioned them to collect all manner of abuse and bad language, each in his own department. One of them among carters and boatmen; another in baths and gaming-houses; a third in barbers’ shops and restaurants; a fourth in mills and brothels. They wrote down in their note-books the most daring, dirtiest, and vulgarest expressions which they heard, brought home all that was coarse and nasty, and emptied it into a disgusting drain, called Luther’s soul.”
“Good! Very good! But what shall we do now?”
“Burn the rubbish, sire, and make an end of the matter.”
“Yes, I will have his heresies burnt to-morrow at St. Paul’s Cross in the City.”
In the great library of the Temple sat the King and Cardinal Wolsey, examining collections of laws and precedents. Outside in the garden the Queen was walking with some of the court ladies. This garden—really a large rose-garden—had been preserved as a promenade for the royal personages who could not sleep in the Tower, because it was haunted, and did not retain their health in the insignificant Bride-well in the City; it was also preserved as a place of historical interest, for here the adherents of Lancaster and York were said to have plucked the red and white roses as their respective badges.
Queen Katherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the patrons of Christopher Columbus, had now, after twenty years’ marriage with Henry VIII, reached a certain age. She had borne him several sons, but all had died: only one, a daughter, lived, known later on as Queen, under the title “Bloody Mary.” Katherine had aged early, and sought comfort in religion; she used to rise at night and attend mass in the garb of a Franciscan nun. She knew of the King’s unfaithfulness, but accepted it quietly; she had heard the name of Elizabeth Blunt, but ignored it.
Now she sat on a seat, and watched her young attendants playing, while she turned over the pages of her prayer book. One pair especially her eyes followed with pleasure—the uncommonly beautiful Anna of Norfolk and young Henry Algernon Percy of Northumberland, Hotspur’s descendant. The pair were playing with roses; the youth had an armful of white and the girl an armful of red roses, which they threw at each other, singing as they lid so.
It was a beautiful sight, but the Queen became sad: “Don’t play like that, children,” she said; “it awakens memories which ought to sleep in the Tower, where Only the dead can sleep quietly. Besides, the King, and consequently the Cardinal, will be vexed; they sit there in the library. Play something else!”
